Paul FETLER (b.1920)
Three Poems by Walt Whitman1 (1976) [22:35]
Capriccio3 (1985) [11:41]
Violin Concerto No.22 (1980) [32:28]
Aaron Berofsky2 (violin); Thomas H. Blaske1 (narrator);
Penelope Fischer3 (flute); Scott Graddy3 (piccolo)
Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra/Arie Lipsky
rec. live, Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 20 September 2008 (Three
Poems); 18 April 2008 (Capriccio); 20 October 2007 (Concerto)
NAXOS 8.559606 [66:43]
The Naxos ‘American Classics’: series continues apace. Here, the work of a
composer quite unknown to me is presented in performances of compelling conviction.
Paul Fetler was born in the USA in 1920 but for reasons unexplained in the
liner-note spent much of his youth in Europe from Latvia to Sweden and Switzerland.
Apparently this is the first CD to be dedicated to his work exclusively and
I doubt there could be a finer calling card. Each of the three works presented
here are strikingly different in style and artistic aim and yet even by this
limited yardstick Fetler emerges as a distinctive, skilful, but above all
musically convincing voice. One of the great subsidiary benefits of this Naxos
series has been the growing awareness of the number of fine hitherto little
known or appreciated orchestras in America. To that list must now be added
the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra. Clearly they have a continuing commitment
to Fetler’s work as evidenced by the fact that this entire CD consists of
live performances given at three different concerts over a year. And what
very fine performances they are – technically beyond reproach but also full
of the fire and adrenalin that a good live performance can bring.
But back to the music. The earliest work presented here Three Poems by
Walt Whitman opens the programme. This was a 1976 commission to mark the
American Bicentennial so how apt that Fetler should choose texts by one of
America’s favourite poets from his most famous work, Leaves of Grass (1855).
Whitman has exercised a fascination for composers ever since his work was
published. Delius, Bliss, Vaughan Williams and Holst are just four of many
British composers to be drawn to his work. Vaughan Williams indeed set Beat!
Beat! Drums! which constitutes the central panel of Fetler’s work as part
of his powerful Dona Nobis Pacem of 1936. All of the composers mentioned
above set these verses to be sung. Fetler grasps the much thornier challenge
of using a narrator and orchestra. As I have said elsewhere in other reviews
I think the format of narrator and orchestra is fraught with difficulties
with perhaps only a handful of works succeeding. To that list I would now
add this work without reservation. The essential problem as I see it is this
– how to relate the text to the music. In a choral/sung setting clearly part
of that problem is solved by the fact that the instrumental lines literally
supports harmonically and thematically the sung line. In a narration does
the composer try to be illustrative (which can result in a rather simplistic
“words in music” effect) or does he create a mood, a bed of sound, on which
the narration sits? Fetler chooses neither of these options, instead, and
with enormous skill, he has created a musical parallel path – a kind of miniature
tone poem, a contemporary reinterpretation of the text that sits alongside
the poem as an equal partner. Of course there are moments when the paths cross
and Fetler illustrates the moment but you never feel that either party is
overly bound to the other. Another major benefit of this is that it frees
the narrator from having to speak the text in a too-limiting rhythm. So often
in narrated pieces the flow of the text when spoken seems inhibited – not
here. In the second movement already mentioned (which describes a city girding
itself for war) the tumult, the fear and excitement is quite brilliantly realised.
This movement in particular is a virtuoso display for the orchestra, all tumbling
brass reveilles and drum tattoos and it is superbly performed here – a piece
that on first hearing is utterly convincing and compelling. The narrator is
one Thomas H. Blaske. His biography in the liner-notes describes him as “a
little-known, much loved raconteur about Ann Arbor”. Can you be much loved
but little known?! Perhaps to know him is to love him. Apparently he is one
of Michigan’s top trial attorneys AND writes poetry for the New Yorker. Add
to that a photograph that makes him look a bit like a character from The
Music Man and it all becomes a little bizarre. Obviously his voice was
amplified at the live performance and my only technical quibble with the entire
disc is that this results in a slightly synthetic quality to his voice as
mixed into the orchestral texture. There is an avuncular charm to his narration
- none of the po-faced, grey toned drone that so often seems to apply to poetic
declamation - that works well. The central setting is a palpable hit; Blaske’s
slightly breathless, not perfectly enunciated style fits the mood to a tee.
I’m not quite so sure he has the measure of the other two movement’s poems,
the simplicity of the imagery encouraging him to a slightly saccharine tone.
But please do not for one single instant let that caveat stop you sampling
this work. Yes, I can imagine the narration being more completely achieved
but the work as a whole is superb. There are too many subtle and skilful moments
to mention in the context of this review, but here are just a couple of highlights.
Liner-note writer Ed Yazinsky rightly characterises the opening I am he
that walks with the tender and growing night as having a nocturnal ambience.
But I sense darker forces at work too. Surely the repeated use of a fragmented
half of the Dies Irae chant is no accident. Perhaps this is another
example where death, sleep and night merge. Fetler uses small motifs both
harmonic and rhythmic to bind the entire work together. So we get string progressions
anticipating the third movement and gentle trumpet fanfares presaging the
second. The orchestra meditates alone for a good two and a half minutes before
the poem starts. What immediately becomes clear is just how modern Whitman
sounds. For works over 150 years old they have extraordinary contemporary
resonance. And therein probably lies the enduring interest in his work. A
word of praise too at this point for all of the solos taken within the orchestra.
There is some beautiful work by the principal horn for one but particular
mention should go to the concertmaster (the same Aaron Berofsky who features
as the concerto soloist) of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra. Sinuously lyrical
high lying lines are played with total security and real beauty.
There is a wonderfully theatrical moment with the opening of the final movement.
Out of the chaos and tumult of Beat! Beat! Drums! emerges a sequence
of the most beautiful peaceful chords imaginable. Again the solo violin sings
a carolling lark-like song high over the orchestral landscape. Little shudders
from strings and a dulcimer-like toy piano (described as such in the liner)
presage another two and a half minute prelude before the narrator enters again
accompanied by the innocent chords of the opening. Solos are passed around
the woodwind – again beautifully played – before in one of the few explicitly
illustrative instrumental passages the orchestra imitate the wind through
the corn, the falling rain and the twittering birds. Precisely because we
have NOT had this literalism before it leaps out as wonderfully effective.
The chords return in the brass choir and the violin resumes its song. It seems
to me that the heart of this work lies in the final words the narrator says
(a repetition of the poem’s opening lines); “Ah from a little child, Thou
knowest soul how to me all sounds became music”. The liner notes tell us how
Fetler’s first composition was a piano piece written when he was six – does
the final lingering duet between the toy piano and ecstatic violin somehow
represent this early inspiration when “all sounds became music”? Pure speculation
on my part but the idea certainly fits the emotional landscape of the work.
Credit too to the rapt audience whose presence you barely notice and who (thank
goodness!) do not break the considerable spell of the work by diving in with
applause – which when it does come is deservedly warm and generous. Hopefully
it will be clear to readers that I consider this a work of great stature and
beauty.
Not that the rest of the disc fails to measure up. Naxos wisely place the
eleven minute Capriccio second. Fetler admits to writing this as an
antidote to contemporary music he describes as “super-serious”. He quotes
a dictionary definition of capriccio as “… an instrumental composition in
more or less free form, often in a whimsical style.” And indeed this is exactly
what we get – less obviously individual than either of the other two works
it is a fun piece. Not so much in the harmonic language it uses, which is
clearly of its time, I would liken the jaunty spirit of it to the many comedy
overtures in the style of Alan Rawsthorne’s Street Corner Overture or
William Alwyn’s Derby Day. Again Fetler makes considerable demands
of the players but the performance here has all the wit and lightness of touch
essential for a successful performance.
The disc concludes with another substantial and immediately appealing work
– the Violin Concerto No.2. Sinuous lyricism is again a phrase that
springs to mind. Fetler has the ability to write melodic lines that although
they are widely spaced and range across the instrument’s entire spectrum cohere.
I am always loath to say any new composer or work “sounds like” – that is
usually down to my lack of deeper knowledge of the new work in question –
but I heard strong echoes of the Syzmanowski Violin Concerto No.1.
Not that Fetler is in any way copying the other work – simply they seem to
share a similar aesthetic with aural images of birdsong and night common to
both. I like the way he creates an atmosphere at once both tranquil yet tinged
with foreboding. Berofsky plays with all assurance he showed in the Whitman
settings. Praise here to the engineers who have him ideally placed within
the orchestral sound picture. Berofsky matches his tone ideally to the rhapsodic
mood of the work – this is not a work which would benefit from a muscular
powerhouse approach. Although the work is cast in the traditional fast/slow/fast
format Fetler has created a highly original work. The orchestration tends
to be more sparing than in the Whitman, certainly in the opening two movements,
but that is very much in keeping with the night-music mood. The central Adagio
opens with a lyrically simple song without words over sustained chords
and arpeggiated pizzicato figures. There are beautiful dialogues for the violin
and oboe and then horn before the violin continues on its wistfully nostalgic
way returning to the opening song. The tutti violins join and a very gentle
climax is reached. The movement draws to its dream-filled conclusion with
further rhapsodising from the solo violin and a final recalling of the opening
material – this is a beautifully proportioned and deceptively innocent movement.
Again, Fetler enjoys the theatricality of a jolting opening to the concerto’s
finale – a fuller orchestra than we have heard elsewhere in the work. There
is a Waltonian bustle and energy with orchestra and soloist chasing each other
around a musical playground. A quasi-fugal passage allows the soloist some
brief respite and when the violinist does re-enter it is with another lyrical
passage although the orchestra seems intent on continuing its game of tag
beneath him. As in the rest of the concerto the solo writing sounds eminently
well conceived and practical. After one last reflective cadenza the scampering
energy of the opening resumes (Fetler does like his temple-blocks, they add
a distinctive timbre to his orchestral palette) and all involved dash to the
finishing post. This is one of those lucky pieces that is immediately appealing
on first listening but continues to impress the more one gets under the skin
of the work. Conductor Arie Lipsky clearly has full measure of these works
and Fetler is fortunate to have him and his orchestra as such enthusiastic
advocates of his work. The engineering of this disc is not by any of the usual
Naxos teams but as mentioned above, with the single exception of the spoken
voice, it sounds exceptionally well.
In the past I have felt that not all of the releases in this series have merited
the title “classics”. Interesting to quote here Fetler once more who says;
“A work becomes a classic or it vanishes from the scene. At times it lingers
on as a curiosity of the past. But above all, what once was modern is modern
no more. All the issues vanish, only expression remains.” There are two works
on this CD that deserve our most serious attention. A disc of moving, beautiful
and very involving music.
Nick Barnard